Staff Picks for January 2025

Ghosts, released 50 years ago this month, was the last album by the Strawbs to appear while the band was on its upward curve of commercial success; a more lyrical follow-up to Hero and Heroine, it was the group's last thrust at wide-audience appeal, with a hoped for-hit ("Lemon Pie") that didn't materialize. The group's mix of acoustic guitars, electric lead and bass, and Rod Coombes' heavy drumming was very compelling on this, their smoothest album.
- Bruce Eder

After tasting success in 1968 with the single "I Can't Let Maggie Go," Honeybus founder Pete Dello left the band after only one album to pursue a more settled lifestyle. His distaste for the rigors of touring left him with a surplus of un-recorded material that would eventually steer him back into the studio to record his first and only solo record, the delightful folk-pop nugget Into Your Ears.
- James Monger

In 2019, Claremont, California's Angel City Jazz Festival commissioned an original work to commemorate Lateef's centennial birthday. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the 2020 festival was canceled. Undaunted, Maupin and Rudolph recorded this five-movement work anyway. Though instruments are not credited, one can hear Maupin play bass clarinet, flutes, soprano and tenor saxophones, and more, while Rudolph provides a battery of percussion instruments, handles arrangements, and contributes careful, illustrative electronic processing. While certainly composed in places, there is abundant room for instinctual improvisation. The approach is both organic and disciplined; the music is at once meditative, eerie, and arresting.
- Thom Jurek

While the music press was following Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, the Suburbs were outdrawing them both in their native Minneapolis in the early 1980s. The sonic link between the city's punk/new wave underground and Prince's sexy funk revolution, the Suburbs never sounded better than on 1984's Love is the Law, an unbeatable mix of dancefloor-friendly rhythms, edgy guitars, arch lyrics, and brilliant, fractured pop hooks. R.I.P. guitarist Blaine John Chaney.
- Mark Deming

Experts in camp and naughtiness, this group – who were so ahead of their time we didn't even realize it – dials up the sexiness for their sweaty, club-friendly third set. Stuart Price brings the production heat through his signature '80s dance sound, while Kylie and Santigold drop in for vocals. The main draw is the epic "Invisible Light," featuring Sir Ian McKellen in Vincent Price "Thriller"-mode, the most shiver-inducing moment of euphoria in their catalog. Time to reacquaint now that they've scheduled reunion shows for 2025.
- Neil Z. Yeung

Charles Peirce's 2004 album for Mike Patton's label plundered from psychobilly, Morricone soundtracks, spy jazz, surf rock, and countless other sources, resulting in gleefully apocalyptic lounge breakcore. It is genuinely one of the best albums of the 2000s, and not to be overlooked. A newly established Bandcamp page has expanded editions of his entire discography, as well as three previously unreleased albums, including a long-rumored collaboration with Speedranch.
- Paul Simpson

Five years after his Brown Sugar album helped launch contemporary R&B, D'Angelo finally returned with his sophomore effort, Voodoo, released 25 years ago today. It must have been difficult to match his debut (and the frequent delays prove it was on his mind), but Voodoo is just as rewarding a soul album as D'Angelo's first.
- John Bush

Equal parts hauntingly surreal and indulgently romantic, Julee Cruise’s debut studio album offers the perfect glimpse into a Lynchian universe. Although Cruise’s signature sweet, ethereal vocals take center stage, the combined artistry of David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti draws out narcotic synths, jazzy riffs, and eerie orchestral inserts—an erotic, sedated trip through the dreamland of the late avant-garde filmmaker. R.I.P David Lynch.
- Lane Liu

In 1975, the singer established herself as one of disco's early divas with her debut album Never Can Say Goodbye, released 50 years ago today, which dance club DJs went wild over. With side one of this LP, Gaynor helped to popularize the art of the nonstop dance mix, a concept that was still alive and well when the 21st century arrived 25 years later.
- Alex Henderson

The Kingston Trio were the user-friendly face of the folk music revival in the late 1950s, and Peter, Paul & Mary represented the (slightly) hipper Greenwich Village version – superb vocal interplay, thoughtful guitar accompaniment, and a savvy blend of folk standards and material from new songwriters. 1963's In The Wind, their third album, was among their best, and featured three songs from Bob Dylan, who also penned the liner notes. R.I.P. Peter Yarrow.
- Mark Deming

Recorded in 1955, this album features the original version of Barbarin's classic New Orleans anthem, "Bourbon Street Parade." Backing Barbarin is an earthy and swinging group of Crescent City regulars including a young trumpeter and future Preservation Hall member, the late-John Brunious. Although ripe with New Orleans traditions from blues to second line, this album never feels "trad".
- Matt Collar

Blood on the Tracks, released 50 years ago today, is an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it's a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. And, in a way, it's best that he was backed with studio musicians here, since the professional, understated backing lets the songs and emotion stand at the forefront. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Upon release, Steve Ashley's debut album was rated The Sunday Telegraph's folk album of the year, and even landed its maker a U.S. deal with Motown, which released it to wild acclaim in America in 1975. After that, Ashley more or less vanished, condemning Stroll On to a "lost treasure" status that wholly undervalues its importance in the UK folk-rock genre.
- Dave Thompson

Building Nothing Out of Something, released 25 years ago today, collects Modest Mouse singles and rare tracks from the group's indie-label years, including the studio tracks from the Interstate 8 EP and their contributions to the Sub Pop Singles Club.
- Heather Phares

Saxophonist Dale Fielder lost his house in the Eaton Canyon fire that ravaged Los Angeles in 2025. A Pittsburgh-native, Fielder moved to L.A. in the '90s, diligently establishing himself as a gifted musical journeyman who often works just out of sight of wider public view. His 1995 tribute to Wayne Shorter underscores his influences, while illuminating his own soulful, hard swinging post-bop. Listening to his sun-soaked "Afternoon in L.A." is both a bittersweet snapshot of happier times and a reminder of how a culture of a city is defined by the creative, hardworking people who call it home.
- Matt Collar

Michael Jackson's fourth and final new studio album for Motown (released 50 years ago today) came nearly two years after its predecessor, Music and Me. The album did spawn two minor chart singles, "We're Almost There" and "Just a Little Bit of You" (both produced by Brian Holland of the Holland-Dozier-Holland production team), and a third track, "One Day in Your Life," would chart as a reissue six years later.
- William Ruhlmann

This incredibly obscure album was recorded in 1976 by a group of friends in Indianapolis but sounds like the best of San Francisco's psychedelic summer of love. Brilliant songwriting, drifty vocal harmonies ala Jefferson Airplane's best and enough experimental tendencies to make this a must-hear acid folk classic.
- Fred Thomas

Showing that black metal doesn't always have to be so dark, Deafheaven's brilliant Sunbather takes the genre to soaring new height, mixing in elements of shoegaze and post-rock to create an album that's powerful, beautiful, and a little bit terrifying.
- Gregory Heaney

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove made his name playing swinging '50s and '60s influenced hard bop. However, he has also scored for D'Angelo, and Common and toured with his own funk-influenced project RH Factor. While many of his contemporaries have delved into jazz-fusion and hip-hop, few have done it with as much believability and originality as Hargrove did on his 2006 album, Distractions. Mixing electric and acoustic instruments, here Hargrove builds upon '90s new jack swing and '70s soul-jazz in a wholly innovative way.
- Matt Collar

The music of pianist (and harmonium player) Melford is bluesy, earthy, lyrical, and spiritual, and she has found inspiration among artists from the Americas to Northern India, leading or collaborating in a wide variety of ensemble configurations. After nearly a quarter century of recordings, this 2013 outing is -- astonishingly -- her first solo piano album. Inspired by the late painter Don Reich, the album is pure Melford at her most beautifully expressive. It was worth the wait.
- Dave Lynch

This was the first of Sergio Mendes' legendary run of '60s recordings to hit hard in the USA. Jorge Ben's bossa nova "Mas Que Nada," was delivered with a tight, hard-grooving, arrangement—it was a smash in America despite having Portuguese lyrics. The set also contains a discotheque-ready treatment of the Beatles "Day Tripper," a sensual read of Burt Bacharach's Goin' Out Of My Head," and the killer Brazilian jam "Tim Dom Dom," João Mello.
- Thom Jurek

EPMD's blueprint for East Coast rap wasn't startlingly different from many others in rap's golden age, but the results were simply amazing, a killer blend of good groove and laid-back flow. Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith really turned rapping on its head; instead of simple lyrics delivered with a hyped, theatrical tone, they dropped the dopest rhymes as though they spoke them all the time.
- John Bush

Their tenth album in ten years was a bittersweet swan song for Felt, one that showed the group was capable of crafting excellent and accessible music even as they were calling it quits.
- Tim Sendra

Promised Land, released 50 years ago today, came from the last studio recordings that Elvis Presley ever made in Memphis, the city where his fame and his legend started. It's not as distinctive or as involved a personal document as Elvis Country or the concentrated soul workout of From Elvis in Memphis, but it does feature some fine, passionate singing throughout.
- Bruce Eder

If astronauts drank the purple stuff instead of Tang they'd probably listen to this space case all day long. Future is a limited rapper but this official debut packages his auto-tuned mumble so well, it's a trip worth taking. Start with the massive hit "Tony Montana".
- David Jeffries

Francesco De Gregori's first three records, as brilliant as they often were, went largely unnoticed. Everything changed with Rimmel (released 50 years ago today), the 1975 release that made him into a pop superstar, and second only to Fabrizio De André as the greatest of Italian cantautori. With a little help from friends such as Lucio Dalla, De Gregori expanded his singer/songwriter compositions into full-blown pop songs.
- Mariano Prunes

Cold winter evenings were invented for this Julie London compilation. Julie...At Home is a warm and relaxed evening, while Around Midnight gets cooler and darker. Pour a highball and settle in for the night!
- Zac Johnson

Yellow Ostrich's 2012 Strange Land is a muscular and tightly wound follow-up to 2011's Mistress. Tracks like "Daughter" and "Marathon Runner" are biting, and self-critical electric guitar mini-epics that burn with a forward momentum merely hinted at in lead singer/songwriter Alex Schaaf's previous endeavours.
- Matt Collar

This was jazz and session guitarist Howard Roberts on a psychedelic highway, merging everything into a Firesign Theatre-like montage of street noise, acoustic improvisations, stoner jokes, intermittent vocals, and electric guitar workouts that simply defies categorization. These are easily two of the strangest and most enigmatic albums Impulse ever released.
- Steve Leggett

Tower of Power was very much in its prime in 1974, when the Bay Area outfit tore up the soul charts with the outstanding Urban Renewal, released 50 years ago this month. Tower (an influence on everyone from L.T.D. to the Average White Band) recorded a number of essential albums in the '70s, and Urban Renewal is at the top of the list.
- Alex Henderson

Knocked into shape in three days in anticipation of his 1974 return to touring, Planet Waves reunited Bob Dylan with the Band, and playing with familiar friends gave this music a loosely tight vibe that's warm and satisfying. From the playfully rollicking "On a Night Like This" and "You Angel You" to the edgy "Going Going Gone" and the purposefully chaotic "Tough Mama," this is an under-appreciated gem in Dylan's catalog that's casually inspired.
- Mark Deming